Corona, commitment and corporate values
Until now, companies who have adopted a working from home policy or dress down policy have done so not because they truly believed in them but because they felt that they had no other choice — if their competitors were doing it, surely they had to too. So we have become used to working from home for one day a week or dress down Friday.
Making such a 20% commitment isn’t hard. It doesn’t require much thought since it’s unlikely that the results will be measured and how much damage could a 20% commitment make anyway? It also isn’t a hard policy to sell, after all, which decision-maker wouldn’t want the flexibility to work from home some of the time or dress as they already do outside of work?
Making a 50% commitment is harder, but is intellectually lazy. You’re expected to give a 50% commitment more thought, but have come to the conclusion that you could go either way. You’re sitting on the fence, hedging your bets. You’re not committed at all.
Making a 100% commitment takes courage and that’s where corona comes in. Corona has forced everyone to think and act differently. Corona forces you to reverse your long-held assumptions. Instead of assuming that offices and corporate dress are the norm by default, it asks the question; How would we all work if there were no offices?
Corona is the single greatest innovator in all companies globally right now. When asked the question, how would we work if there were no offices, IT teams rose to the challenge. They identified the de-minimis set of working tools that would be required (a VPN, desktop, soft phone) and set about implementing this in days rather than months or years. Business as usual was thrown to the wind. The change needed to happen today. With the immediate problem of connectivity solved, the focus is now on how do we measure whether staff WFH are productive. Great.
In the next couple of months, companies now will have the unique opportunity to ask themselves the question “Why do we have an office anyway”? Clue — it’s not because you need desks.
By nature, my own tech start up is an incredibly creative company (my amazing co-founder also happens to hold a world record for the smallest nano-sculpture of the human form), so as a team of creatives our office is designed to foster creativity. That’s who we are, and how an office serves us, as opposed to us serving an office landlord.
New joiners are surprised at induction day — instead of the typical handbook of policies that take about a day to read and a minute to forget, our policies are formed of single sentences that collectively take up no more than half a page. Our dress code policy is “Wear whatever makes you feel good” and our home working policy is “You choose, but we encourage collaborative office working”. What you wear or where you work is less important to us as a business than the corporate values we have which then drive behaviours. Values and behaviours form the focus of our HR induction (email me at michael.lewis@claimtechnology.co.uk if you’d like a copy).
Our home working policy is written as it is because it reflects our belief in how embracing open conversation without ego achieves better results, faster. These conversations could take place online but there’s something magic about being physically in the room, sharing ideas and seeking out the truth from a multitude of belief systems, perspectives and experiences. It’s also why our office is designed not for desks (because we all have one of those at home) but for creative conversation. What I miss most about WFH during Covid 19 is the insight that literally oozed out of our tiny office that stemmed from unplanned, ad-hoc conversation. If this is what you need more of, one tip; don’t book a meeting.
If you’re not thoughtful about your values and how they should inform why you work the way you do, you’ll seeing ongoing issues and may struggle to understand why. An example of this is a company I invested in — a company that manages short-term lets on Airbnb. They were advertising a customer communications role, and whilst the pay wasn’t stellar the main draw was a ‘working from home’ policy. After all, you only needed web access to message guests. What could possibly go wrong?
The fatal flow was selling the role on the basis of an HR policy that although well intended was at odds with what the company actually valued. When candidates see that a role is home-based, the candidates that naturally self-select are those that have to work from home, because they have other commitments and are looking for a job that can work around them. In this company however, speed was of the essence. Not replying instantly to a guest was the difference between securing a reservation or not, or getting a 4 star review instead of 5. Those metrics were highly transparent and the bedrock of their success. Guests have zero interest in little Tommy having a meltdown or waiting for the school run to be over when they are waiting by the door and can’t self-serve their check-in after a gruelling 12 hour flight. The role requires you to work around the guest, not the guest working around you. Whilst you may be able to find home-workers who fit the brief, the role is much better suited to being both shift-based, and office based. Home working for this particular tech company is a disaster. And until I raised it, they could never understand why their employee turnover and training costs were so high.
The outcomes our own start-up culture generates are impossible to replicate in companies that think in terms of policies rather than values. As we believe “Speed is of the essence”, it was no surprise that from within this culture came “Speed Driven Development” — a radically different approach to software development. As we believe in the importance of conversation, it is no surprise that we default to “Pair Working” as opposed to the current corporate default of individuals working alone at their desks and then emailing their output for someone else to comment on. Is it any surprise that no meaningful comments are sent back on a document you have spent all week working on? The time for insight and creativity is at the deliverable’s genesis. The last thing you really want from reviewers is insightful comment that truly challenges a whole week’s work. Whilst starting again from scratch would be the right thing to do, it ain’t never gonna happen.
It took courage for us to believe in different, especially when our enterprise client base is in the insurance and legacy industries who pride themselves on tradition and precedent. But as we value authenticity we’re actually totally comfortable with “you do you, I’ll do me”.
This focus on values also makes business more human. We value who people are and what they do outside of work, as much as what they are doing at work. We value authenticity and becoming the best version of ourselves, instead of trying to force everyone to fit into an artificial box of the corporate’s own mind (title, job specification etc).
Every company needs to think their policies through in a thoughtful and meaningful way, in order to be able to fully commit to their own success. 20% or 50% commitment isn’t good enough. Nor are mere policies. Find out what you truly believe in and believe in what you say.
